Merin Simi Raj

Bio: Merin Simi Raj is an academic researcher from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. The author has contributed to research in topics: Malayalam & History of literature. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 3 publications receiving 3 citations.

‘Not Knowing for How Much Longer’: Requiem for the Living as an Act of Cultural Recovery of the Paranki Community in Kerala

Abstract: The Portuguese creole community in Kochi, Kerala, also known as Parankis, is one of the lesser known groups of Anglo-Indians of Portuguese descent whose origins may be traced to the sixteenth-century colonial history. Using the interpretative framework of Memory Studies, this chapter closely examines the novella Requiem for the Living (2013) by Johny Miranda as a text that narrates the everyday life and local history of the Paranki community from an insider’s point of view. Introducing the idea of ‘identity-consumption’ as key to the remembered events from personal and collective memory, the authors demonstrate how this intergenerational tale of mixed-race identity and assimilation calls for a more nuanced and diverse understanding of Anglo-Indianness as well as a re-mapping of scholarship on Anglo-Indian studies.

The politics of representation and the “ideal Malayalee woman”: Remembering Malayalam women’s magazines of the early 20th-century Kerala, South India

Abstract: This article analyses the early-20th-century Malayalam women’s magazines of Kerala in terms of their politics of representation. These magazines emerged at a time when Kerala was on the cusp of mod...

The Indulekha moment and the Malayalam literary canon: On the literary history of the early twentieth-century novels in Kerala, South India

Abstract: This article analyses the politics of the literary canon of the early twentieth century Malayalam novels with particular focus on the impact of the novel Indulekha (1889) in literary history. The inception of novel as a literary genre is widely regarded as a point of departure for Malayalam literature leading to the development of modern Malayalam, thereby shaping a distinct Malayali identity. Interestingly, the literary histories which established the legacy of Malayalam prose tend to trace a linear history of Malayalam novels which favoured the ‘Kerala Renaissance’ narrative, especially while discussing its initial phase. This calls for a perusal of the literary critical tradition in which the overarching presence of Indulekha has led to the eclipsing of several other works written during the turn of the twentieth-century, resulting in a skewed understanding of the evolution of the genre. This article would explicate in detail, on what gets compromised in canon formation when aesthetic criteria overshadow the extraliterary features. It also examines how the literary history of early Malayalam novels shaped the cultural memory of colonial modernity in Kerala.

‘This Foul Substance Is Called History’: Anglo-Indian Memory-narratives and (Mis)remembrances in Sealy’s The Trotter-nama

Abstract: This article demonstrates how, through various acts of remembrance and recovery, The Trotter-nama makes it possible to challenge as well as subvert dominant historiographical constructions about the Anglo-Indian past and their lived experiences. Thus it argues that the interconnectedness of memory, history and fiction could initiate newer possibilities towards reclaiming identities that are historiographically silenced, forgotten or elided.

Matriliny Transformed: Family, Law and Ideology in Twentieth Century Travancore:

Abstract: The book under review is a welcome addition to the subject of dowry which has been dealt with comprehensively. Moreover, written in a noncliched language, it is a delight to read and both specialists and layreaders will find it interesting. It has contextualized the dowry system in historical, social, political and scriptural contexts. And this is what makes the book really useful for scholars. But one does feel that Sheel should have also discussed the forced state.reforms during the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi the only time when giving and taking of dowry had taken a beating under state surveillance.

The state of psychological wellbeing of unemployed distinction graduates and the factors contributory to their wellbeing

Abstract: The concern of this study was to determine the current state of psychological wellbeing of unemployed distinction graduates in Nigeria and some of the factors that contributed to their wellbeing. T...

‘This Foul Substance Is Called History’: Anglo-Indian Memory-narratives and (Mis)remembrances in Sealy’s The Trotter-nama

Abstract: This article demonstrates how, through various acts of remembrance and recovery, The Trotter-nama makes it possible to challenge as well as subvert dominant historiographical constructions about the Anglo-Indian past and their lived experiences. Thus it argues that the interconnectedness of memory, history and fiction could initiate newer possibilities towards reclaiming identities that are historiographically silenced, forgotten or elided.

India and Britain Inside and Outside Sakku Bai and Jackson: The Narrator and the Anglo-Indian Family in Ismat Chughtai’s “Quit India” (“Hindustan Chod Do”)

Abstract: Ismat Chughtai’s short story “Quit India” (“Hindustan Chod Do” in Urdu, 1953) represents the relationship between Indians and British colonists and Anglo-Indian Indians by examining the life of Eric William Jackson, a British official in pre-Independence India and an unemployed outcast and displaced person following Independence who lives with his working-class lover Sakku bai, and the narrator’s outlook towards the family. The ex-British official Jackson’s attempt to “Indianize” himself perhaps fails after Independence because he does not seek the desire of the new Indian state in the spaces of business and government like he does in the domestic space of Sakku Bai’s lodgings and in his relationship with her and perhaps also because the narrator and the other citizens of the new Indian state ignore those who are powerless such as the charwoman Sakku bai and the unemployed Jackson. The narrator’s focus on Jackson and Sakku bai’s family seems to indicate, at least partly, a desire to look outside the domestic sphere for mental and spiritual stimulation even though she appears to be a typical domestic goddess. This could be related to the women’s movement’s need for a greater role for women outside the house in pre-Independence and Independent India.